


Deep Web

by nicdbroc



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Not a fic but more of a delirious rant, slaps across the face are not welcome but are understandable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 06:43:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3347408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicdbroc/pseuds/nicdbroc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura lets Carmilla critique her late-night inspired fanfiction, and immediately regrets it.</p><p>(Takes place just after the Christmas episode).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deep Web

"What in God's name are you doing up?"

 

Laura, eyes haggard, hunchbacked over her laptop screen - barely blinks. It's 8am; there are a couple of loose strands of sunlight sneaking through the blinds, and she thinks it's about time Carmilla should be nodding off. She swivels in her seat to look over where Carmilla's slowly sitting up, having made a makeshift bed for herself in the diner booth. Laura snaps her breakfast (a gingerbread man) in half and takes a bite.

 

"Hit by the muse," she mumbles through a mouthful. "I thought I'd write it down before it left."

 

Carmilla crinkles her nose. "What the _hell_ are you talking about?"

 

"It's called letting your creative juices flow, Carm. It's quite nice, actually," she says, stubbornly trying to make herself heard over Carmilla's loud snort, whilst simultaneously taking great care not to wake LaF and Perry up. The duo have been essential in preventing Laura and Carmilla from murdering each other (and blocking all sexual activity, though Laura can't see what part of that is 'essential') - but she really doesn't want to talk to them so early in the morning. 8am is not the best time for Perry's unique brand of intensity and LaF's bizarre, minimally invasive questions about her sex life. "I was thinking that it wouldn't do us any harm to try and, you know, reclaim our - uh, normality."

 

"Huh. Because there's anything normal about attending a university where vampires are rife and the library attacks you."

 

"You – forgot the bit where my girlfriend murdered Santa Claus' wife last night."

 

"You know, oddly, I think stranger things will happen." Carmilla, despite looking like 'being awake' is the last thing she wants to be right now, shuffles over from her side of the diner booth to Laura's and plops down onto the empty space beside her. She thinks that if Carmilla were to compile a list of ' _the things I do for you because I am an idiot_ 'this would be on there at a steady number five. Carmilla eyes the half-eaten gingerbread man on the table. "Seriously?"

 

"There's nothing else to eat. I never thought I'd moan about eating sugar all day, every day, but it's kind of -"

 

"Unhealthy? Disgusting? Unsustainable?"

 

"I was gonna say heavy. Do you want one?"

 

"I'm good."

 

Laura only nods and returns to the screen. Her forehead - the two spots above the eyebrows - is beginning to feel like it's going to split; such is the excruciating pain of staring at a laptop screen for so long. She should probably get used to it - promising journalist of the future and all - but she really thinks she could be tempted into murdering someone for two ibuprofen caplets. The only comfort is Carmilla's hand, which has settled on her thigh. Her thumb is rubbing mindless patterns that feel like they're searing through the denim of her jeans, and a moment later Carmilla knocks their heads together.

 

She kisses Laura's temple, a move that is appreciated but not wholly helpful in neither stirring her muse nor getting rid of her headache. "Last I checked, Prof. Cochrane wasn't setting assignments."

 

"Prof. Cochrane's probably living it up in Bangkok right now," Laura chortles. "No... I present to you, _normality_."

 

Even though she's sure Carmilla doesn't give two shits about normality, she pushes the laptop screen towards her anyway. Carmilla squints for a few seconds and then grins. "Are you reading fanfiction again? I thought you'd gotten over that."

 

"I have," Laura says, a tiny bit defensive. She pulls the laptop back towards her. "I'm writing it instead."

 

"You're - _writing_ it?"

 

"Yeah." The defensiveness goes up by a couple of notches. "What?"

 

"Nothing. Nothing - I just thought -" Carmilla cuts herself off, abruptly enough for Laura to tear her gaze away from the screen in concern. Carmilla's face is scrunched up ever so slightly. She's thinking. "I was going to say I didn't think it was your scene, but then I realised it's - exactly your scene."

 

"I'd like to see you try and find 'another scene' to grow up in when your adolescence is essentially monopolised by Harry Potter and Glee," Laura gabbles, the speed of her talking fuelled only by sugar and fond memories of the adrenaline rush she used to get by opening mature-rated Livejournal works on a private browser. She wonders when would be a good time to tell her dad that over protectiveness is a strategy doomed to fail. Maybe when she takes her vampire girlfriend home. "You know, I used to write _loads_ of good stuff when I was a teenager. Like, really creative things. I remember I used to have to password-lock certain folders because I didn't have a laptop. My dad and I shared a desktop PC."

 

Carmilla buries her face against Laura's shoulder and smothers a laugh. She keeps her face there and doesn't say anything for a while, probably dozing. "Dangerous game," she says, voice low, into Laura's collarbone.

 

"Well." Laura lifts her chin. "I'm a dangerous girl."

 

This time, not even Carmilla's lips pressed against her skin can stop the bellow of her laugh. Laura slaps her on the thigh. Carmilla doesn't even flinch, but she does compromise. "You're right, in a way. I mean, not many girls have - you know - pushed their university Dean to their death. So that's an invaluable skill you can take away from your educational experience."

 

"Okay - for the record - when you meet my dad, can you stick to talking about my A- in journalism and _not_ mention the fact that I killed the Dean? When - um - if - we make it back to him, I mean."

 

There's nothing but radio silence from Carmilla's end.

 

Laura thinks, again, that she's fallen asleep on her shoulder, hand insistently clamped over her thigh. But then Carmilla's head bobs, and she feels the softest of kisses pressed to the crook of her neck, and then another one just below her earlobe. So tender that Laura always forgets she's harbouring a set of fangs and the innate urge to yank someone's artery out with them.

 

" _When_ ," is all Carmilla says about that, and then her hand is squeezing Laura's thigh again. She's done it enough times for Laura to have learnt by now that it's a comforting gesture. She doesn't want to think about why she needs comforting. Carmilla gets it, because she changes tact pretty quickly. "Come on. Show me your fanfiction."

 

 

-

 

 

It's a bad idea, showing Carmilla her fanfiction history - mostly because Carmilla mocks every single bookmark in her collection for the mediocrity of the writing, ruthlessly trashes the existence of alternate universes and refuses to believe that there's an audience at all for fanwork spawned by Twilight.

 

"Twilight is essentially a fanfiction of my existence," she says haughtily, "so why would I acknowledge a fanfiction of a fanfiction?"

 

"Can you just appreciate that nobody on this website's a pro?"

 

Carmilla snorts. Laura curses the fact that she'd let herself forget - even if it was for a millisecond - that Carmilla is, at heart, an utter _wanker_. "Well, I can certainly tell."

 

The only thing Carmilla seems to value is the professionalism of her pseudonym _LHollis_ and the fact that she is exercising her writing prowess at all. She thinks the latter point is only made because it's now nearly 9am and Carmilla's eyes are drooping. The fifth time Carmilla yawns, Laura gently taps her on the arm and tells her to sleep. Carmilla simply says: "Can't sleep where there's an education, sweetheart. If I'm going to have to get used to a lifetime of doing mundane things with you, I guess I might as well dive into the deep end first."

 

"What, like reading my fanfiction?"

 

"Like I said, the deep end."

 

Laura opens her mouth and promptly snaps it back shut when she realises that Carmilla's probably right. She's got five-thousand words of Draco and Harry snogging in a store cupboard. The deep end doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

 

-

 

 

"This - okay, this is tragic. I don't even know why you've written that. And - why do I get the impression you've essentially projected _me_ into that character?"

 

To put it simply, she's never seen Carmilla so irate - and certainly not because of her. It's worse than the time they'd hiked here and Carmilla had been staring at everyone with hungry, vampire eyes. At least that could be somewhat remedied by a badger. This Carmilla is a peculiar mix of bafflement, indignation and mortification. The murderous, black panther version is much easier to tame.

 

"Draco's a troubled person." Laura cranes her neck so she can see over into the next booth, where LaF and Perry are still sleeping. It's nice to know that there's _some_ peace still left in this diner, because Carmilla positively balloons when Laura says it. Definitely sleep deprivation. "You're just identifying with him, is all."

 

"So Narcissa Malfoy in the books was abusive, over six foot tall and wore pinstriped pantsuits? Let me guess, next chapter she sticks parasites in Hermione's brain."

 

"You should probably go to sleep."

 

"I'll sleep after critiquing chapter seven."

 

"Carm, you don't need to get worked up by it - it's just a bit of writing." She rolls her eyes, which only serves to further displease Carmilla. Typical that she can't take what she dishes. "And for the record, Hogwarts High is a totally legitimate thing to -"

 

"Hogwarts is essentially a high school anyway! I don't understand why you're -"

 

"Because I don't think house parties and seven minutes in heaven are regular occurrences in the Gryffindor common rooms, so I had to stick them in a _normal_ high school -"

 

"What, and abandon Ginny Weasley in the hands of a preposterous love triangle and cheap Narcotics Anonymous plotline because you can't have her firing off bat-bogey hexes anymore? Are you sure your pseudonym shouldn't be something like PTSD-Kitten?"

 

Laura groans. "Oh my god, you are being _so_ immature."

 

"I am over three hundred years old, and you're calling me -"

 

"Rude. Ah-ah-ah. I don't want to hear anything that's not constructive."

 

They glower at each other, both refusing to back down. Stalemate. Laura has had her fair share of internet trolls during her lifetime, but getting her multi-chaptered work of genius ripped to shreds by her vampire girlfriend is something that's still settling, slowly, unpleasantly, in her mind. It's not that far out of reach - from her own high school experience anyway. Her food tech teacher had battled with rumoured a coke addiction (or at least that's what Elena Lewis had said). Everyone's played beer pong and made out with someone they regretted. As a kid she'd spent a considerable amount of time wondering what 'being gay' meant - so amplifying the confusion by a thousand fold isn't that unrealistic. One of the girls in her year had even been bumped off her bike by a car, and Laura's pretty sure that even though she'd never explicitly shown symptoms of PTSD, anyone would get triggered by blue Volkswagens if they got mowed down by one.

 

"You." Carmilla stifles another yawn. "Have a habit of over-dramatising everything. To the point where it's not even realistic. Do you honestly think if you stuck Crabbe and Goyle in Hogwarts High they would even last a second before getting expelled for their utter stupidity?"

 

"Okay, it doesn't matter. I'm sure there are stupider people than Crabbe and Goyle in high school. And you can't just expel them for being dumb, that's so - elitist."

 

"Are you being - okay, you know what, just think realistically -"

 

" _Realistically_ , I'm stuck in an Austrian diner in the middle of nowhere, my girlfriend _ate_ the owner last night and we're currently fleeing our weird university that was run by a girl-sacrificing kidnapper of a Dean." It comes out a lot angrier than intended, but given the fact that Carmilla's spent the last twenty minutes ridiculing her piece of work, Laura can live with the way Carmilla's face falls at her words. "So really, if you ask me, I'd rather be stuck in high school where smoking a cigarette was a big deal - if a little gross - and my biggest worry on a Saturday night would be avoiding the creaky floorboard on the way to the desktop PC because I wanted to send creepy anonymous asks to all my favourite writers on tumblr without waking my dad up at 2am. Instead, I'm here, it's Christmas, and I can't wake my dad up because I'm not at home."

 

If there's anything Laura has learnt, it's that Carmilla's silence is often worse than her spewing snarky crap. Carmilla so often has something to say that on the odd occasion she doesn't, it feels like everything shifts slightly to the left. Only slightly – not too much that it's noticeably awkward, but enough to feel off. Carmilla stares at her, and clenches her jaw. It is nearly ten – about time they near some sort of denouement where one of them spontaneously combusts. It has been brewing for a couple of weeks.

 

Carmilla stares for so long that Laura wanders beyond the realm of getting lost in those - silky, chocolate, murky orbs of mystery - and instead begins to feel unease itching up the back of her neck. Then Carmilla clears her throat, heavy-lidded eyes flicking back to the laptop screen once more.

 

"We could tweak chapter five a bit," Carmilla says, voice suddenly sounding very foreign. It may be the sprinkling of kindness that's snuck its way in. "I can't believe _you_ of all people wrote a gay male sex scene, though."

 

Laura sighs and turns her attention back to the laptop, relieved at the lack of serious fallout. Ashamed at the Ron-Snape. "I know – I just thought five chapters was maybe a bit long to go without _some_ form of sex. And I can't bring myself to write Hermione into one, so..."

 

"Not even with – like – a girl? I thought you used to practically get off to her?"

 

"Well, yeah, but I'm not degrading my favourite fictional character with a badly-written sex scene," Laura says sternly. She shrugs. "Basic feminism 101, Carm."

 

"Right." Not even Carmilla, queen of stoicism, can hide her disconcertment. She leans over to take control of the mouse pad and clicks open chapter five's Word file. "Shall we?"

 

Laura smiles. Carmilla is carrying herself with about as much enthusiasm as a rotten doorknob, but she is already highlighting her way through the chapter and – well, the way her year is going, she figures she can't ask for much more. She figures she doesn't _want_ much more, either.

 

 

-

 

 

"What... are you guys okay?" LaF hovers beside Laura and Carmilla's booth, brow furrowed in concern. Perry is poking over their shoulder, like she's expecting something awful to jump out at her.  "Laura? I feel like you haven't moved since last night."

 

Laura doesn't so much shake her head as she does loll it to the side. "I don't think I have."

 

"You should take breaks," Perry advises primly. "It's not good for your back. And you'll fester if you don't move."

 

They both get ignored, and eventually LaF sighs. "Please just blink if you agree?"

 

"Stop talking," Carmilla growls. "Or I'm going for the jugular."

 

"Whoa, Laura – calm your girlfriend down –"

 

"We're on eighty six thousand words," Laura says, by way of apology. They make a surprisingly good team – if only because Laura is so determined to get her ideas written down, and Carmilla is so determined to filter out her incessant bullshit. For their own sanity, they slog it out, and it works. "Give us a few more hours and we're good to go."

 

"That's what they all say," LaF mutters under their breath. "At the start."

 

"It's gonna be huge," Laura says when she tears her gaze away from the screen to glance up at the duo. They balk at the bags under her eyes, but if they think for a moment she's gone insane they don't show it. "I'm gonna have so much to vlog about. _Huge_. Just. You. Wait."

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm not entirely sure why or how this happened (or why nothing effectively...happened- I will label it diplomatically as "not a fic but more of a delirious rant". In other words it is just to be taken Not Seriously. (that is simultaneously my disclaimer and apology. lol) Thanks again. :)


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